Beyond the Dome

Sarah Palin seemed to confirm tonight what her record as Alaska governor suggests: Her views on executive power, and specifically the powers of the vice presidency, might not be too far from the way Dick Cheney has approached the job.

It’s not that vice presidential experts think Palin could come anywhere close to Cheney’s level of influence, given that John McCain would be the experienced one in that partnership — the reverse of the relationship between Cheney and President Bush.

But it’s hard to read her answer to Gwen Ifill’s question tonight — about Cheney’s insistence last year that the vice president doesn’t belong to the executive branch — as anything other than a bid for as few constraints as possible:

“Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda in that position.

“Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we’ll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation.”

Remember that the whole dispute focused on Cheney’s refusal to comply with an executive order setting rules on the handling of classified information. He and his advisers, particularly chief of staff David Addington, had spent most of the past seven years resisting congressional oversight, yet now they were resisting an executive order by insisting that the vice president is actually part of the legislative branch, too.

Joe Biden had the polar opposite view of the Cheney theory. “Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history,” Biden said. As to his own view of the vice presidency:

“The primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there’s a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.

“The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he’s part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.”

At least in this election, both vice presidential candidates have had to answer the question.